Cloud computing now sits at the center of business growth, innovation and digital transformation. But to attain all the benefits, businesses must embrace a multi-cloud strategy to which requires the support of data center cloud service providers to make the most of what cloud providers have to offer. We can see the proof that this is a necessity rather than a trend in Gartner’s Market Insight Report showing 75 percent of organizations will have adopted a multi-cloud or hybrid strategy by 2020.

Every business today is weighing what applications to move to the cloud and seeing those application workload needs increase and evolve. This evolution has taken businesses from public to a combination of public and private for a hybrid cloud approach, to finally the need for multiple clouds.

A multi-cloud approach is where a business uses more than one cloud service from more than one cloud vendor to match workloads and applications to the best environment. If done correctly, this can positively impact access, efficiency, business innovation and cost structures among other areas.

Cloud providers compete by adding unique features that can add value, but they also can create “vendor lock-in” where migration to another vendor is often difficult. A good multi-cloud strategy allows enterprises to move certain workloads without massive application or business implications. Cloud service providers can make multi-cloud strategy adoption simpler by shouldering the burden of cloud connectivity, management, and more.

Leading data center providers can also act as cloud computing services providers by offering hybrid cloud strategy options with connection to public cloud providers. This will also include cost-effective options for colocation and private cloud with remote hands and other managed IT services. But it is their connectivity to all cloud providers and cloud management services that simplify the complexity of the multi-cloud strategy.

The single source connectivity to cloud providers via data center cloud service providers delivers a foundation for the multi-cloud strategy. The data center provider can essentially offer a home for workloads that can move among cloud providers to leverage different needs while also providing a place to repatriate those workloads when and if necessary without a loss of productivity or continuity or costs.

The age of IoT and analytics requires business to find ways to get real-time analysis of sensor data that bypasses the added step of going to the cloud. Data center providers can act as cloud computing services providers by enabling compute and data storage that is geographically closer to where the sensor data is being produced. This edge computing approach also provides a means to help businesses get their application infrastructure physically closer to end users to improve performance and tame network bandwidth costs.

With countless organizations needing to protect sensitive data at rest and in transit based on regulatory compliance needs, cloud security services are now an integral part of the multi-cloud strategy. Data center providers can be the crucial link to delivering management, security, compliance, and governance across a variety of public and private cloud environments.

Moving forward, multi-cloud and digital transformation are permanently linked. Cloud service providers can guide organization through the ever-changing landscape to provide the crucial management support, connectivity, agility, security and cost planning for a viable multi-cloud strategy.